Of knives, and conspiracy theories

Yesterday while half asleep I sawed a cut in the side of my finger while trying to slice open a frozen bagel. Although that did wake me up, I didn't feel that walking around the living room holding my hand above my head to slow the bleeding was really the best start to the day.

Also, I dropped half the bagel in the sink and had to chuck it out.

Today, I managed to toast a bagel without further injury, although I'm still wary of my knife. I suppose cutlery and I have had a difficult relationship of late; I snap a knife in two while trying to cut some cheese, and a scant few months ago I cut myself with another knife.

Coincidence? Or the sign of some dread conspiracy?

Speaking of dread conspiracies, I'm reading This Is Not A Game by Walter Jon Williams. I've been a long term fan of WJW, insofar as I read Voice of the Whirlwind as a callow youth and was most impressed, and a few years ago I read Hardwired: he could certainly write action sequences.

It's a little shameful, perhaps, that the reason I chose TINAG was because it was the cheapest book in Page One's science fiction section, but it was that or some dreadful Games Workshop doorstep about Space Marines, a Halo tie-in, or a Charles Stross I didn't feel I had the mental capacity for that day.

Thus I was taken aback by how many ideas TINAG is teeming with, and how well the feel of Jakarta is nailed within the first chapters of the book, and just how clever Williams is, without feeling as though he's showing off. Little bits and pieces help: the fact that he locates one scene in Lincoln's Inn Fields made it feel very personal to me (although I suppose some of the action in LA would do the same for others) but overall it's just the way that he constructs a very believable near-future situation, without resorting to huge infodumps of data to explain what's going on, that has made me read 360-odd pages in less than 24 hours (which includes necessary pauses to sleep, eat, and work).

The only thing I find a little unconvincing is that so many people would be invested with Augmented Reality Games (ARGs); perhaps I'm blighted from playing an absolutely awful one in 2000 that was intended to promote some Nokia or other, but I wonder if there really would be millions of committed players, or if they'd just all be playing Farmville instead. But it's a great read: it feels almost like a real-world version of Halting State, for want of a better comparison. Which gets us back to Stross once more.

Last night while falling asleep, had an idea about something involving cockroaches and nude women. Lots of cockroaches. Maybe not many nude women. I wonder if I'm making a 1980s slasher movie by accident. Must really, really get this Hong Kong Horror Novel done.